Being trustworthy carries no risk while being trusting exposes one to exploitation

Evidence

Note that this disposition seems genuinely to be a disposition to be trustworthy, not merely to act in a trustworthy manner, although the latter may often be entailed. A comparable disposition to be trusting seems much less likely, because its range is radically larger than that of any disposition to be trustworthy. If I am always trusting, I will be the gullible target of increasingly many people. After losing repeatedly from my excessive trust, I will have overwhelming incentive to alter my disposition. I might still have a risk-taking disposition, but this will be more limited in that it will not lead me to take egregious risks. Hence trust and trustworthiness are not analogous or symmetrical in this respect, because one can be disposed to trustworthiness without significant risk. One will be led to invoke one’s disposition only when in fact one has done well, as in a mutually beneficial exchange. A relationship cannot make you worse off if you are merely trustworthy in it. It can, however, make you substantially worse off if you are trusting in it—as his relationship with Trifonov probably made the lieutenant colonel worse off. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 211

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the analytical frame: in Total Blindness, mutual monitoring collapses because visibility disappears, so the cost asymmetry involved in being trusting (vs trustworthy) explodes in a world where guidance cannot be verified.